Thursday, July 17, 2014

Green Tea Shortbread Cookies and Black Sesame Mochi Cakes

Long overdue post!

A few months back, Tim's girlfriend Theresa organized a surprise birthday party for Tim at a winery in Half Moon Bay. I never knew such a cute winery existed in Half Moon Bay. It was a beautiful sunny day and a whole picnic table was laid out with delicious food and sweetest little details like hand-written notes for Tim. As we hid behind the bushes waiting to jump out, Tim arrived and was pleasantly surprised to see everyone that he loved gathered to celebrate his special 30th birthday together. What a perfect day!

Since Tim loves green tea, mochi, and Asian desserts in general, I decided to bake something green tea and something mochi. After searching online for the perfect recipe, I followed this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and slightly modified it -- rather then using a cookie cutter, I shaped the dough into two logs and rolled them around in turbinado sugar to add the extra crunch. The logs were then refrigerated for a few hours and sliced into discs and baked until crisp. The result was crispy, buttery and crumbly shortbread cookies with the perfect amount of subtle green tea flavor.

For something mochi, I baked black sesame mini mochi cakes with red bean filling. Adopted from this recipe, I lightly toasted and ground up black sesame seeds to mix into the batter. A dollop of sweet red bean paste was dropped into the batter right before it headed into the hot oven. These little gems turned out to have just the right amount of chew to them with lighter texture than traditional mochi.

It made me so happy to see Tim gobbling down these treats. Hope you had a great day!